Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Day Two - Yosemite Tour

Let me start off by saying that I woke up at around 2:00 this morning to go potty and detoured over to the window. I opened the curtains and saw a sky FULL of stars...I felt like I could just reach out and scoop a whole bunch up.... so beautiful!! Being out here where you don't have any light pollution really enhances the night sky!!

Okay on to the tour.... I got myself around decided to just grab some fruit and a muffin out of the snack shop and shovel those in while waiting for the bus to arrive. I somehow ended up being the last person to get on the bus (I decided to make a pit stop before leaving and didn't hear them calling "all aboard"). I got there and ended up having the front seat right behind the driver, which was perfectly fine for me. I was the only person traveling alone; everybody else were all coupled up which got me a little sad to start with because it was just one more thing that I was doing by myself without somebody there to share in the memories with....but I got over that as I was also able to do my own thing. In fact at one of the stops I was chatting with the tour guide and she asked if I was married and I said "no" and she said "I'm always impressed with women who have the courage and are brave enough to travel by themselves." I have to say to myself, "I'm pretty proud of me too."

Anyway, on to the tour. We saw lots and lots of trees and rocks and mountains. We went to the top of Glacier Point and had our lunches...the food was nothing more than a turkey sandwich and chips, but the view was SPECTACULAR!!! We went to the valley floor and visited The Ahwahnee, nice hotel but I was expecting something along the lines of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining...not so much. It was nice, though. The waterfalls, except for Bridalveil Fall, were all dried up due to the late season and global warming. We saw three different teams of climbers climbing the face of El Capitan (talk about crazy). I took probably 150 pictures, which someday I'll get some of them posted so y'all can see.

Oh, and I have determined that the toilets in our national parks leave a lot to be desired.

I wish that I had come to visit Yosemite earlier and been able to spend more time here, doing some hiking and exploring (well, except I'm not really a hiking kind of person), but this is just one more place that I'll have to come back to.

Tomorrow morning I'm getting up at the crack of dawn and heading back out through the park up and over Tioga Pass and into Nevada and along the Extraterrestrial Highway into Vegas to meet my Dad....

3 comments:

You totally rock for doing stuff by yourself! Anytime you want to go back to Yosemite, I'll be happy to join you. In fact, that's where I learned to ski...on powder...sort of ruined the local mountains for me but was AWESOME! I love Yosemite in the summer too...went camping there a lot when I was younger.

Safe driving tomorrow...don't worry, the aliens are currently inhabiting my body, so you should be safe ;)